But It's Just My Soul Responding
by JDylah-da-Kylah
Summary: Set early-on during Starfighter: Eclipse. Helios becomes aware of the inner struggle waged by his Navigator, Selene, as the two of them begin to process the complexities of the Fighter/Navigator bond and what it means to (almost compulsively) fall in love. Or: Selene has nightmares, too... but not about the Colterons, or anything else Helios expects.


Like a huge sappy sucker, I fell in love with Selene and Helios while playing through Starfighter: Eclipse, and any other route I took after that just felt... wrong. Depending on what route you take in the game, Selene offers Helios some emotional support as he grapples with his sister Valentina's disappearance; however, in every other route—where you're incredibly mean to Selene, IMHO, in order to curry the favor of Cain, Abel or Deimos—you see a different side to him—one that's, on the surface, petty, jealous and needy. What I saw, however, was basically a man who was very much in love and constantly having his heart broken; who was incredibly insecure and actually found, in Helios—at least potentially—a grounding sense of security.

I wanted to explore that side of Selene which we don't necessarily see if you go through his route. I wanted Helios to get a chance to comfort Selene (in this story, before the latter comforts him about Valentina). I also just wanted to play with the awkward dynamic of the Navigators and Fighters, and what it's like when they maybe realize they're actually falling for each other. I was really, REALLY tempted to throw in some... proper sexytimes, let's say, between these two? But honestly, it just didn't feel right, so I left it where it is. ;)

Title borrowed from a song of the same name by Amber Run, which—to me—seems like how Helios might feel if he were cognizant of all the ways he could (or would or did) break Selene's heart by sleeping with pretty much everyone else.

This is my first fanfic in _ages_ , so I'd love any-and-all feedback you might have! Enjoy!

* * *

Selene's eyes slid open in the dark, the illusory night-cycle of the _Kepler_ lying thick upon the ship. The room was cold, the regulation blanket offering scant comfort when he had little flesh to warm his bones. More than Abel, anyhow, though the slip of a Navigator shared a bed with well-muscled Cain—so at least he had some comfort—

 _Speaking of . . ._

The sound which had awoken him snagged his ears again: the rustle of a restless form from the bunk below, a breath hitched into a strangled cry, a sound of fear, of loss. On the first night, Selene had bristled to hear a woman's name on his new Fighter's lips—an irrational, childish reaction—they were strangers, after all—but soon . . . soon he understood the vividness, the violence, of Helios' nightmares. And that he cried out for his sister.

They'd been paired together now for going on two weeks: their scores in the VR simulations were unprecedented—even by the lauded prodigy and his snarling dog. Cain was something, in Selene's mind, not fit for duty: Fighters were, by nature, exactly what their name implied—but there was something _feral_ in Cain, in his possessiveness of Abel, which set Selene's skin to crawling.

 _Thank the Gods—or Mother—or whoever—that you're not . . . like that . . . I'm so lucky to—_

Selene bit his lip, listening as Helios' breathing, ragged, slowly, slowly crept back to a steadier tattoo. Until he slept soundly, if not dreamlessly. Almost two weeks, and what had come of it? Of the strange sickness that gripped the Navigator whenever Helios smiled, when he dropped a word of praise, when he clapped him on the shoulder with a bear's-paw hand after they'd been the best in sims?

 _Nothing. Nothing, because I can't—_

 _Because I can't lose you. Can't lose this. Can't risk . . . ruining it . . ._

Not even to crawl down the ladder, to reach out to touch the Fighter's cheek, to hold him until the nightmares passed. To speak a soft word into that curving ear, whispered past the stray locks of sleep-mussed hair, in some half-forgotten tongue.

Selene stared into the darkness, counting seconds, hoping that soon, soon, the lights would flash on in a savage mimicry of day and, at last, he'd find some respite from the specters in his head: work was his soothing-salve, his comfort, much as PT was to Helios. Selene's mind craved the stimulation, and—if nothing else—it didn't leave him time to _think._

Night, unfortunately, gave him no such comforts.

* * *

Helios woke before the day-shift lights came on. His head felt thick, as if he'd slept too long or hard; he breathed slowly in the silence, forcing himself past the fog, reminding himself—yet again—that dreams were dreams—that the past, that his life in the slums of a colony on Mars, was over with, was done. There was nothing to be afraid of here. Well—the Colterons, obviously—but at least no lecherous bastard waiting to take his body or cut his throat or both.

He listened to Selene above him; the Navigator was so quiet when he slept that Helios, normally above such petty fears, hoped he wasn't the one to break the silence—Valentina had always said he snored, though he prayed now that she'd been teasing. Because this was so _peaceful_ —

Was it, though?

He frowned. _Not really, if I'm honest._ Something had indeed seemed coiled in Selene, tersely-coiled and ready to snap—he'd noticed it not too long after they'd been assigned to one another. It was . . . little things that another might have left unnoticed. Helios took pride in his observations—observations on the streets could save your life—though here that skill had little use except, as it were, to keep tabs on his crewmates.

And one Navigator in particular.

Now, lying in the dark, staring at the underside of the— _his_ —Navigator's bunk, Helios blinked in sudden shock, the net of his thoughts cast wide over their days together. How Selene had half-danced away from his touch after the VR simulations, as if he wanted it so much he couldn't stand it. How he'd blush and look away if Helios spoke gently to him. How his eyes grew dark if Helios' wandered to Abel—how his jaw would clench—

The Fighter's stomach knotted pleasantly and guiltily as his mind also doled him other memories: of their morning shamble to the communal showers and how Selene determinedly refused to look at him. How he'd ducked his head, his shoulders bowed, and so carefully held the towel around himself. How the beaded sweat from steam and threads of moisture had run down his olive skin—

Helios found his hands pulled into fists, fighting for a steady breath. Selene was _beautiful_. He'd known it and refused to acknowledge it simply because the stress of their situation couldn't permit him such a luxury—such distraction—

He and Selene relied on each other—or they would, if a real mission ever came—and he'd be damned if he'd lose their lives because his mind was on the Navigator's body rather than the rapid-fire signals Selene issued through their headsets. If, in his head, his hand wasn't curled around the weapons-throttle but—

 _. . . Damn it._

He heard Selene shift somewhere above him, sighing deeply—and thought, or hoped, he caught the thread of a name laced throughout the next breath. And the next, distinctly now: his own.

 _I can't—I shouldn't hear this—_

Selene was still asleep, he knew—his Navigator wasn't like the rest of them, who seemed to take pride in flaunting their virility. He was . . . not innocent . . . but pure; if he ever (as did so many of them—and none-too-clandestinely) took to masturbating in the showers, Helios sure as hell didn't know about it.

So now—

Quietly he slipped from bed, tip-toeing across the room until he was safely in the hall, the door slid shut. His cheeks burned, though, and that little heat which had curled his fists—the longing—still slithered in his gut. Selene was dreaming about _him_ —and oh, what Helios wouldn't give for—something more—for them to both admit their feelings and say fuck all propriety, because this was a war—and who knew if they'd get tomorrow, really—

Not yet, though. Not now. Even if it meant an awkward, pre-day shower to relieve the desperate aching in his groin, Helios would at least give his Navigator this: to suffer the unsolicited thrall and agony of an erotic dream in private.

* * *

Selene swore—one of the rare times he ever cursed—and extricated himself from sticky sheets when the lights snapped on and drew him from some blessed, erotic place. Quietly he reasoned to himself that he should have expected it—and it _was_ simple biology—but still—

Helios had gone, though, and the empty bunk he found left a sharp doubt dancing in his mind. Had he—had he called out? Had Helios been so disgusted with him that—

"Ho, Selene." The Fighter's head peeked through the half-cracked door. "I couldn't sleep, so I got up early and . . . uhm. Can I come in?"

"Ho, Helios." Selene brushed the tangled strands of hair back from his face. "Give me a second. Please?"

Hastily he wadded up the blanket, shimmying down the ladder, dancing from his shorts. They'd all need a wash— _And we don't submit our things for laundering until tomorrow—damn—_

He pulled his towel from their pitifully-lacking closet, distinctly aware of the stickiness lingering against his thighs—as if Helios could possibly find out. "You can come in—I'm just going to wash up before breakfast—uhm."

Selene tried to slip through the door, past his Fighter, without drawing attention to himself, or lingering too long in the heat radiating from that muscled frame. And that, perhaps, was his mistake—he usually carried himself so confidently, whether or not that's how he felt—and half-naked or not, there was nothing to justify this skulking—

"It's . . . okay. Selene?"

Helios' voice, usually a little rough around the edges, carried an unmistakable softness now, and it stopped the Navigator in his tracks. The rubber flooring of the hallway bit into his feet. He dared not turn—

But when Helios said nothing more, Selene felt he had no choice: one furtive glance over his shoulder, though, revealed a closed door and an empty hall: he was alone.

* * *

"You said it was okay."

Night-cycle again on the _Kepler_ : Selene's mind still rang with the echoes of it systems, emblazoned on his brain. But sleep was elusive, and Helios, it seemed, was still awake as well—perhaps—and just that perhaps was enough to give Selene the courage to speak up.

"Helios, what was?"

A half-vocalized grunt was his only answer for such a long moment that the Navigator closed his eyes, readying himself for defeat. And then: "Last night. What happened. You . . . were dreaming about . . . well, you know. It's why I got up."

The words were thick and forced and rushed. Selene was glad of the darkness now.

"I'm sorry," he whispered finally.

"You can't help it. And for Mother's sake, we're sleeping in the same room. It happens. Don't worry about it, okay?" Helios chewed at the words, startled at the anger there—not directed towards Selene, per se, but that the Navigator would be so self-conscious . . . In the slums or the bellies of transport ships or even the Alliance barracks, he'd never had that choice. Maybe for Navigators it was different—they were all so delicate, so soft, so cerebral—

Selene most of all.

"No one seems to care about that here, do they?" Selene knotted his hands. "Everyone's so open about who they've slept with . . . or in the communal showers, I see them . . . I don't know. I wasn't raised anywhere _nice_ like Abel but I was always taught that there's propriety."

"Well, not here! For us—I don't know—for us Fighters, anyway, it's . . . it's instinct? It's survival. It's like the drive to pass along our genes, but that's sure as fuck not happening, is it? So we boast about it instead; like boasting about it is showing your crewmates baby pictures or whatever. I don't know. We're like . . ." Helios paused again, and Selene heard his knuckles crack. "I've heard some of the Navigators say we're brutes. Like animals. And I guess it's true. We fight. We posture. We smear ourselves around because—"

"You don't. Encke doesn't."

"He's . . . well, Encke's something different." Helios frowned up at the bottom of the lower bunk; he'd seen how tenderly Encke looked at Keeler. _I . . . want to be able to look at him like that someday. Selene . . ._ More importantly, though, at least in the immediate situation, was what Selene had so confidently said. "And . . . no. I don't."

"I'm glad," whispered Selene. "I wasn't sure—I just—I hoped . . . And anyway . . . we Navigators aren't so pure. Not all of us."

"Hm."

"You do it—what you said—you fight, you posture, you—"

Helios' lips curled despite himself, a strange hatred for his own kind nipping at his throat. "We fuck around."

Selene cleared his throat. "I didn't say that."

"Well, it's true. Whatever."

"Alright—alright. You do all that because . . . it's a war we're in. I heard Abel tell Keeler once that Cain—that after a skirmish—he quite literally got off on the death of a 'Teron. And—I don't know. I guess there's something to that. Staring at your own mortality, there are only so many ways to handle it."

"So. How do _you_ handle it, Selene?" Helios didn't know what sort of question it was, or what his Navigator's answer would be. It certainly hadn't come out the way he'd meant—

Selene swung his legs up and dropped over the edge of the bunk, emboldened now, spurred on by the searing in his gut: he _needed_ Helios to see him now, to hear him as he spoke, to look past the façade he so often projected to the outside: brilliant but second-best, always, to Abel—and somehow content with that—and looks unlike any others on the ship—with olive skin and star-bright eyes and indigo-grey hair dyed to fade to white—

 _To white,_ Helios thought suddenly. _Like the light V mentioned—_

"I don't really handle it, you know."

When Helios looked up, it was to find Selene crouching at his bedside. The Navigator's nearness sent a shiver up his spine. But his face, so close, with its sharp cheekbones and steady gaze, was so earnest and so raw that carnality was quickly thrust from mind. Impulsively he reached out to touch one of those fine-boned hands—and then to brush the hair on that Goddamned _brilliant_ head—

"I don't handle it." Selene closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. "I have nightmares too, Helios. I don't know. They've changed since . . . But I don't handle . . . what we're doing out here. I bury myself in work because if I'm going to die, at the very least I want to be useful. I want to be _worth_ something. And right now I—"

"You're so damn good in VR sims—"

"Only because I have the best Fighter, who can take any shot I line up for him."

"Don't short-change yourself, damnit. And Cain's actually the—"

"Fuck Cain."

Helios stared a moment, caught somewhere between disbelief and laughter. "W-what?" The words didn't sound right, at all, coming from Selene.

But a second look at the Navigator and the laughter died a grisly death in his throat, leaving a bitter trail and a wad he couldn't swallow. "Hey—"

"I've seen you look at him. And Abel. And Deimos."

 _Oh._ Helios rubbed a hand across his eyes. _Well, okay, I_ look _, but it's not—_

 _(It's not how I look at you.)_

"That's . . . that what my nightmares are."

The Navigator's thin shoulders were trembling.

"I see you with . . . with them. With Cain or Abel or Deimos. Or more than one of them at once."

"Why?" A stupid question—but Helios had nothing else to give. They were on the borders of Alliance space, with 'Terons breathing down their necks, and _this_ was what Selene had nightmares about? His Fighter having a threesome with, God, Cain and _Deimos_?Or Abel? Shit.

"No—wait. Don't . . . it's not important." Helios wished he'd thought before speaking at all. There was a crease between Selene's eyebrows, and the lids were heavy over his eyes, as if he were forcing himself not to blink—not to cry. "I—"

"You idiot. You . . ." Selene's mouth worked a minute, as if he could hardly bring himself to speak. "You . . . completely inconsiderate . . . fucking bastard."

And then, in a voice which hardly seemed to be his own: "How the _fuck_ can you say it's not important, Helios? Why the fuck else would I have nightmares about you with anyone else? Why the fuck do you think last night happened? Why—"

"Holy—ugh, Selene—shut up and listen for a second, would you?"

Helios fumbled through the dark, finding a hand, a tear-streaked hollow cheek. He was surprised to find himself shaking, too. But this—he'd never once have thought that _this_ was under all Selene's confidence, his haughty streaks, his . . . jealousy. Was fear. Was such raw Goddamned fear of being alone, living alone, dying alone when the one man at his side whom he might have loved, whom he was in all reality _supposed_ to love—

"Selene, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out like that. I just . . ." Helios drew a deep breath. "I couldn't believe that anyone would care about me so much—would want me so much—that _that's_ what they'd have nightmares over. . . . I don't know. What else do you want from me?"

Silence, then, when each knew what the other was thinking, was hoping; when each felt the same heated stirring in their groin and felt their heartbeat quicken. Helios leaned closer to Selene's silhouette, suddenly desperate now to feel his lips, his skin, his body—because that's all any of this really was—sheer desperation—or else—

"No."

A slow, slow breath from the slender man, the beautiful, the brilliant one. "Not yet, Helios." Such sadness—and then Helios knew he had a right this time to drop the same, sharp word as earlier: " _Why_?"

Selene's hand was cool against the Fighter's burning cheek; Helios wondered if he were to reach out and trace the Navigator's shoulders or chest they'd be just as smooth, just as much a respite from his own generated body heat. "Because I don't want it to be . . . like this, Helios. Not with both of us . . . unsure . . . what it is we want. You see?"

His voice, Helios noted with relief, was back to normal—there was no trace of the frenzied, broken man who'd been shouting at him mere moments before—who'd in those moments probably said _fuck_ more than Selene had ever said hitherto in his life. No—this was _his_ Selene again: collected, steady. Sure of himself, if unsure all at once; the exterior, at least, was whole. It frightened the Fighter a bit, though, that the Navigator could so easily regain control; he wondered if it left Selene's brilliant mind a minefield, rife with buried needs and hidden fears and things that maybe—just maybe—would be better to satisfy or confront.

 _Maybe that's why we Fighters are so . . . volatile. We're just not hardwired the same way. We . . . anything that comes up, we have a solution: we fight or we—_

Beneath the flimsy blanket his hips jerked involuntarily as a fresh wave of longing for Selene washed over him. If the Navigator noticed—and Helios was sure he did, from the sharp hitch of his breath—he had the decency to let it go.

 _God, Selene, why_ not _?_

But that wasn't a fair question to pose to the Navigator, not when—in all reality, and well enough Helios understood—Selene was being the most rational. And—the thought suddenly left Helios on edge—and if Selene were to approach sex from this place of . . . melancholia . . . of fear, of grief . . . then in what state would it leave him?

 _I'm a Fighter. I'm . . ._ your _Fighter. My job is to protect you. I'd be doing a fucking awful job of it if I—if something happened—_

Slowly he reached up to wrap his arms around Selene's shoulders, breathing in the scent of him, laying his head briefly against his chest. "Okay," he whispered finally. "Okay."

Selene shuddered in his grasp for a moment, almost whimpering. "Helios," his voice was low, was sharp. "Let go of me."

 _—_ _and what the hell was I just saying? Fuck._ Helios closed his eyes, feeling both selfish and foolish. To embrace his Navigator as a comforting gesture might have worked, but not like this, not when Selene was piecing himself back together and each knew well enough they were on the brink of self-control.

Selene rose to his feet and turned hastily away—ashamed of his obvious arousal—and murmured something about taking a shower. Helios nodded absently, pursing his lips, not quite trusting himself to speak anymore. The Navigator, though, took one look at his Fighter, and a small, small smile crossed his face.

He fished his blanket from a corner where he'd thrown it, too disgusted and embarrassed to have done much more that morning. "Mine already needs a wash . . . Uhm. So . . ."

Helios waited until Selene was surely in the showers before hastily throwing his own blanket up into the latter's bunk. He'd be so cold tonight without one.

And then he began to rock into his hand, imaging smooth skin and supple fingers in its place, the name of his brilliant Navigator at his lips, cried out over and over when he couldn't bear it anymore. Brilliant and half-broken, Selene was, but so were all of them—half-broken, anyway, in some way or another. None was as brilliant as the Navigator, though—none at all—none could hold a candle to the man who pulled him as the moon pulled on the Earth's ocean's tides.

* * *

Selene, ensnared by a thick shroud of steam, kept one hand braced against the wall, his body tense, hoping, _hoping_ no one was awake because sound had a tendency to carry here, to echo, to reverberate across the tiles—but this, but this was too exquisite, too incredible, for him to even think of keeping quiet. He _needed_ this.

For the first time in what seemed like eternity, there was no guilt to plague him as his hips bucked into one hand, the fingers of the other roaming restlessly across his chest, his ribs and thighs and backside, as he wondered what it would be like to be pressed up against the solid mass of flesh that was his Fighter. To be inside him, to feel him quiver, to hear him cry out—

He kept time with four simple phrases, short and sweet, dancing through his head; soon, though, soon his body lost the rhythm and he threw back his head, breathless but finding breath enough to almost scream the Fighter's name. And when, finally, he returned to his senses, to the tile underneath him, to the weak spattering of water—now lukewarm—the same thoughts, sure as the imprint of the _Kepler_ 's systems from that morning—and far more meaningful—remained:

 _Helios._

 _I want you._

 _I need you._

 _I love you._


End file.
